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Homeworld-Class Assault Carrier
The Homeworld-Class Assault Carrier was designed by the Ilium Shipyards design team. It's Ilium shipyards first major capital ship project and has become very popular in the Republic navy. The Ilium Design Team stuck with what they know for this one and built her solid as a rock with no real offensive capability aside from her extensive fighter compliment. Homeworld Class Assault Carriers became known as "Buckets" of the fleet which changed recently when each Carrier had to go through a refit which upgraded all their critical systems, as well as added several new weapons. History The Homeworld Class Assault Carrier began it's life towards the end of the Jedi Civil war. Ilium had just become a signatory of the Republic and their initial starship designs had been major failures when compared to even the weakest ships of the line the republic could put forth. Ilium engineers immediately set about designing a large scale vessel that could represent their world in the Republic fleet with pride. 2 years worth of designing and lots of off world consulting later and the Homeworld was more or less designed. It went through 3 variations when Republic engineers approved it and the ship started into production. Paid with mostly credit since the Republic had fallen on very difficult time with the war. The first three were built at the same time in the Ilium shipyards and sent off to the Republic fleet with mostly Priamese Crew. During the last 2 years of the Jedi Civil War the Ilium shipyards cranked out two more of the vessels for the Republic and have been steadily producing them ever since. When the ship started to become outdated, which happened quickly due to the nature of it's design, the Priamese designers struggled to quickly come up with refit plans for the whole fleet of them. These plans didn't see the light of day for a long time though because the Republic decided to moth ball the whole fleet of them. Those still in service were scrapped for parts or stripped and turned into bulk cargo haulers. It wasn't until Galactica made a defiant stand against a fleet of pirates that the carriers proved their worth again, and with a lot of political maneuvering by her Captain, the Republic defense committee agreed to begin refitting the Homeworld Fleet. Galactica was the first ship to receive the refit but the rest soon followed after. Weapons For weapons, her Mass Driver turrets are an advanced versatile version which can be loaded with different projectiles to fit mission parameters. These new mass drivers can fire simple slugs for anti capital ship operations or exploding flak rounds for an anti fighter role. There are 11 turrets along her dorsal and ventral surfaces each and 5 turrets are along her port and starboard sides. Her turbolasers are placed on the hull in pentagonal clusters of 5 to help concentrate their fire on a single target and bring it's shields down so that her mass drivers can do the most damage. One Cluster is above the forward hanger deck, one is on the ventral surface of her bow, the next is on the dorsal surface of the armored plating around her engines and the last is amidships on her ventral side. Her Ion cannons are arrayed in two linear groups. One on her dorsal surface near the bow and the other directly opposite the first on the ventral side. Her point defense laser cannons are fast cycling weapons with a 150 bolts per minute firing rate and are completely computer controlled. Her two amidship Main Rail Cannons fire 500 ton, solid tungsten slug with a iron jacket. The Jacket provides the magnetism necessary to propel the slug from the ships gun while the solid tungsten gives it the mass to do serious damage to a ships hull. Unshielded corvettes and other small ships can be obliterated with a single blow from one of these slugs. The sheer power required to move the slug at relative speeds upon exiting the barrel is also just as impressive as the damage it can do. Capacitors tied into the main reactor must charge for nearly 2 minutes before there's enough juice to fire the weapon. The size and weight of the slugs also cause complications because the ship can only hold 6 of them for each gun. Once the weapon fires, a revolver like mechanism moves and a plunger loads the next massive slug into the barrel while the capacitors charge. These Rail Cannons were removed for the refit and replaced with Picard Type Rail Cannons which are almost identical but shorter and more efficient. Her anti fighter Concussion missile launchers are stored and fired from two external turret emplacements. Each turret has two missile pods holding 30 missiles each and can swivel 360°. One turret is located center line amidships on her dorsal surface while the other is directly opposite on her ventral surface. She's equipped with 16 Hornet Missiles tubes along her forward decks. These Hornet missile can be equipped with a multitude of warheads. Homeworlds are almost always equipped with a standard load of four, 50 megaton warheads for orbital bombardment purposes. Shields/Armor She's protected by 3 Medium output shield generators in overlapping arcs for maximum protection. Her forward and rear arcs overlap slightly over her port and starboard arcs and her dorsal and ventral arcs overlap over her forward and rear arcs. This method of shielding offers great protection from turbolaser strikes as well as missile strikes. Her hull is meter thick durasteel with a honeycombed under layer between the outer and inner hulls. The outer as well as the inner hull have greater then average braising which protect her from impact damage extraordinarily well. She's build like a well engineered diamond, she'll take a beating and keep on ticking. Engines/Power Plant She has 10 High efficiency Ion engine systems clustered at her rear to provide propulsion for the ship. Even with that many engines however the ship is slow. She was built to haul a large number of fighters into an engagement and protect them, so speed wasn't on the Ilium Design teams mind. She's still fast enough to keep up with an average fleet however so she is by no means a sitting duck, just a really slow one. With the refit, the Homeworlds engines have been improved but not by much. Making upgrades to the engines is very difficult because of the design of her hull. With all the extra bracing, bulkheads and frames its quite a chore to get at the engines and replace large components of it with updated versions. Her maneuvering thrusters have been updated from simple jet turbines to small Ion drives which dot the surface of the ship. For a powerplant the ship uses a large hypermatter annihilation reactor which supplies power for the engines, weapons, shields and artificial gravity. Two secondary reactors located next to the hypermatter reactor power the ships secondary systems like lights and life support. In addition to these power sources, there is a backup battery supply which can power the engines for sublight travel, life support, gravity and lights for up to 36 hours. Fighter Compliment The ship has two hanger decks. A small forward hanger deck is used for VIP and civilian shuttles while the main hanger holds the ships combat starfighter compliment. The Homeworld has facilities and crew to maintain 120 small combat craft like starfighters and assault shuttles and bombers but can easily carry more than that on a non combat basis for long periods of time. The forward hanger bay is accommodated by a short runway which leads through a 40X30 hanger door which has both an armored sliding door and a magcon field to make it air tight. The forward hanger bay can hold up to 6 mid sized shuttles but has facilities to operate and fuel an extra squadron of 12 fighters. Her main hanger bay consists of a single huge fighter deck. The refitted design included overhead racks for holding TIE Fighters and their variants. Fighters enter the ship through the hanger doors on either side of the ship and are assigned a landing zone by the Chief of the Deck. Once the fighter lands a ground crew rushes in, helps the pilot out and taxies the fighter into a parking space where it's landing gear are clamped down to the deck to prevent the fighter from shifting during flight. Fighters are normally launched from fighter launch tubes. The Homeworld was first constructed with 12 Fighter launch tubes. After the refit that number was doubled to 24. Each side of the ship has 12 tubes which can launch a variety of fighters. Each fighter is loaded at the rear of the tube, clamped into a hydraulic catapult and launched. TIE Fighters can not be attached to the catapult so they are launched using a magnetic accelerator system. After the fighter is launched, the rear of the tube is opened again and another fighter is slid into place for launch. Alternately, fighter can launch from the main hanger doors but this is a much more complicated maneuver because it requires the fighters to fly down the hanger, turn port or starboard and then exit through the main hanger doors while avoiding ground crews and the overhead TIE Fighter racks. Mobile Dry Dock The port side of the ship is dominated by a large enclosed repair dock that can accommodate larger ships up to 250 meters in length. The facility is enclosed and can be sealed well enough to hold air pressure so repairs don't have to be done in space suits. It has a universal docking mechanism which can mate with a very wide variety of ships. Within the facility itself is a fully fledged workshop and fabrication center equipped to do anything from fabricating large pieces of starship frame or making sensitive electronics. If your a Corvette and you lost something that needs to be custom made in order to replace, the Homeworld Class Assault carrier has the facilities to do it. The Homeworld can carry a fully equipped repair crew but thats not usually the case unless the carrier is a unit dedicated to the task. Usually repair work is handled by the crew of the ship needing the repairs. They can stay aboard the homeworld for a time while while they work and use the carriers facilities. The Homeworld can not make the jump to hyperspace while a vessel is docked in her mobile dry dock.